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Within the Wild West world of smartphone app development are many
weight-loss applications that abide by at least a few of the
methods clinically proven to help people drop pounds, a new study
finds.

The best, said study researcher Emily Breton, is the SparkPeople
app. On the other end of the spectrum are apps like the one that
recommends putting your vibrating phone on your belly, supposedly
to shake apart fat cells.

"We actually found, oddly enough, that the majority of the apps
did provide evidenced-based information," said Breton, who
conducted the research during her graduate work in public health
at George Washington University. "I expected to find that more of
the apps had fluff."

Finding that the apps are based partially on solid science
doesn't prove that they work, Breton cautioned. To show efficacy,
you'd have to know if people actually use the apps and stick to
the weight-loss rules. But the new study does suggest that apps
have potential for tackling America's obesity problem, Breton
told LiveScience. [Read: 7 Diet
Tricks That Really Work ]

"There definitely needs to be more research about these types of
apps and what they contain," Breton said.

Smartphone users have downloaded millions of health-related apps,
but there has been almost no research to
find out whether they work. Part of the difficulty in
evaluating apps, Breton said, is how fast they proliferate. Her
study, published online Sept. 23 in the Journal of Translational
Behavioral Medicine, examines the 204 weight loss-related apps
that were available in the iTunes store in September 2009. Since
then, she said, many more have become available.

Breton and her colleagues evaluated each app based on 13 criteria
established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug
Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for
weight-loss programs.

The criteria included whether the app assessed weight, encouraged
eating fruits and vegetables, encouraged physical activity,
encouraged drinking water over juice or soda, included a food
diary component, and encouraged a balance between calories
consumed and calories burned. Ideal programs also would
encourage a moderate weight loss of 1-2 pounds (0.5 to 0.9
kilograms) per week, focus on food-portion control and the
reading of nutrition labels, provide a way to track weight and
physical activity, and include a meal planner and a
social-support component.

Science and smartphones

A handful of apps in the store were downright humorous, Breton
said, including the one that advised vibrating fat cells away. A
few others recommended unhealthy techniques such as drinking
lemonade all day or eating only apples, she said. [Read:
7 High-Tech Helpers to Get Fit ]

But for the most part, the apps were at least somewhat based in
science. Only 6 percent met none of the 13 criteria, the
researchers found. A quarter had just one good component, and 30
percent had two. Another quarter encouraged three or four
desirable weight-loss methods.

The best program, Breton said, was the free app SparkPeople,
which had 12 of the 13 components, lacking only social
networking.

"Very few apps, it was 3 percent, had
social components," Breton said. "That was a big surprise."

Since the study, Breton said, SparkPeople and many of the other
apps have added links to an online social-networking site.

For users trying to choose the best app for their own lifestyle,
Breton suggested checking out user ratings; the study found that
the higher the user ratings for a given app, the more likely it
was to conform to science-based standards.